Stop Being Hard on Yourself Because Chronic Self-Criticism Is a Form of Trauma

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Do you say harsh and mean things to yourself that you would never say to someone you love?
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Do you find it easier to forgive other people than it is to forgive yourself?
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Do you look in the mirror and feel a quiet, familiar dissatisfaction or shame that you hide from everyone else?
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Do you treat yourself with judgment and impatience when you make mistakes or when things do not go your way?
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In today's episode, we're going to talk about why chronic self-criticism, self-shaming, self-abandonment, self-rejection, and self-hatred are traumatizing over time because it is all essentially self-harm.
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Society and culture have normalized internal violence, and it's not okay, friend.
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People beat themselves up so much, and we normalize it as self-motivation.
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But for many people, the most consistent abuser in your life is yourself as an adult.
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Now, when someone else talks down to you, treats you with disrespect, and diminishes your worth over and over again, that is classic complex relational trauma.
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But why does no one talk about why an abusive relationship with yourself isn't traumatic?
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Because it is.
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Self-harm is far more common than we realize.
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When we think of self-harm, people typically think of people like physically hurting themselves, like cutting themselves or pulling out their hair, etc.
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But emotional, psychological, and spiritual self-harm is just as harmful and just as traumatic.
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Now, to be clear, before we start this episode, this is not about self-blame.
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Taking ownership for your relationship with yourself and how you treat yourself is never about blame.
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Blame is not healing and not a productive use of energy.
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Accountability and responsibility are.
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And that's what I hope to encourage with this episode to offer a lens that people don't talk about, but needs to be known because normalized self-harm is not okay.
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So this episode is actually ultimately about the necessity of self-love, unconditional self-love to be specific, and thus self-liberation.
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Welcome to the Simple Source, a paradigm-shifting space where self-love, healing, spirituality, and personal growth are redefined.
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Have you been told healing takes years, that abundance must be attracted, or that transformation requires struggle?
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You haven't been told the truth.
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I'm Linda Villines, a certified, trauma-informed holistic coach, author, and spiritual guide.
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After healing myself from chronic conditions, complex trauma, and lack, not by following traditional frameworks, but by creating my own, I'm now teaching you to love, heal, and free yourself, mind, body, and soul, so you can reclaim your highest health, happiness, and potential with joy and ease.
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Each week, we go beyond surface-level self-help and into the real mechanics of transformation.
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If the traditional paths to healing and spirituality haven't produced the changes you want in the life you desire, you're in the right place.
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You were never meant to struggle or wait for what is already yours.
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Let's get started with today's episode.
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Unconditional self-love, which is the opposite of self-hatred and self-harm, is not only self-regulating, but it is the foundation and pinnacle of self-healing.
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That's why I wrote a whole book about it.
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Because your nervous system doesn't care who a threat is coming from.
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It doesn't distinguish between your boss yelling at you or diminishing your worth or you yelling at yourself and diminishing your own worth and your own head.
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To your body, it's the same stress response, which means it elicits the same surge of cortisol, causing the same tightening in your chest and the same micro trauma recorded in your brain and your nervous system.
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And then that means your nervous system really doesn't distinguish very much between internal and external harm.
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So whether the voice of constant criticism comes from someone else in your life, like a partner or coworker, or from yourself in your own head, your body registers that same threat signal.
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So every time you shame yourself, criticize, and diminish yourself, your mind and your body record it as stressful, as harmful.
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And then when it happens over and over again, it becomes traumatic to your mind-body system.
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Because over time, that harm accumulates.
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It becomes a chronic, constant internal environment of stress and emotional threat.
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And that's the exact same environment that develops in someone who lives with ongoing emotional or mental abuse.
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And this is what most people do not understand about trauma.
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Trauma isn't just your nervous system response from what externally happens to you.
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It's also your nervous system response from what keeps happening inside of you when you keep relating to yourself in unloving and harmful ways.
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So when people say that they're doing the work, they're investing in healing, they're going to therapy, they're meditating, et cetera, but healing isn't productive for them.
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They don't enjoy it.
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It's largely because they don't love themselves, particularly unconditionally.
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That means they're still harming themselves while still trying to heal themselves.
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And that is never going to work.
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You can't heal yourself while you're harming yourself.
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I say this in the book, I say this in my program, I say it a lot because it's true.
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It doesn't matter how many external relationships you quote unquote heal, like your relationships with your parents or your partner or friends or coworkers.
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If you are still living inside an abusive relationship with yourself, true healing is not possible, friend, because you can't receive pure love.
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Experience true safety or genuine inner peace if your own inner world is unsafe and unloving.
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So unconditional self-love is not a luxury.
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It's not self-care.
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It's not a cliche.
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It is the foundation of all productive and authentic and lasting healing.
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It's actually the point of all healing, to know your whole self and to love your whole self.
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And so it is how you reclaim your wholeness and achieve mind, body, soul coherence.
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It's how you free yourself to be your highest self now and not in some later ideal future.
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So when you stop being your own source of trauma, you're going to find that healing your other traumas and pains and problems is going to be so much easier, so much more enjoyable and like truly joyful.
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And so that is what this episode is fundamentally about, why we're going to unpack why self-harm through constant self-criticism and self-shaming and self-rejection and self-hatred is not benign, is not neutral.
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We're going to talk about how treating yourself like that literally rewires your brain and continually dysregulates your nervous system and makes it more difficult to heal and also fragments you from your wholeness.
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And we're going to talk about how you can begin to end that invisible and normalized cycle of self-harm to come home to yourself again through unconditional self-love.
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So in the past couple of months, I have been prioritizing somatic practices as a focus in my healing, specifically, hip-opening somatic practices and anger release.
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And these types of somatic exercises are like the tiny small movements kind, because there are different types of somatic exercises.
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And by golly, boy, has it been a revelation.
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And what has been released, which I have never, never quite experienced before so distinctly until now is the release of decades of self-hatred that was stuck in my body.
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I've been practicing unconditional self-love for over a decade now.
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And it's a core foundation of my healing.
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It's a core foundation of my philosophy and life and what I teach.
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It's so central to my existence.
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But what I realized recently through this deeper level of somatic release with these different types of somatic exercises is that practicing unconditional self-love is not the same thing as releasing self-hatred and my body.
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That was like, yeah, the by golly boy, that's a revelation of revelations.
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And when I realized that, that chronic self-harm and self-hatred is then actually legitimately traumatic, I knew I needed to do an episode about it because no one talks about this.
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No one says that.
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And people talk about relational trauma, right?
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Being traumatized with other people, people who are consistently mean to us, disrespectful, diminishing, abusive emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually, whatever.
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But never do we hear about an abusive relationship with ourselves that can be traumatic.
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And I realize that chronic self-hatred and chronic self-harm, particularly emotional and psychological in nature, is traumatic, not only because it makes sense from a scientific and also spiritual perspective, but because I literally felt the emotional and physical release of my body, like letting go of decades of self-hatred and self-harm.
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And it wasn't just like emotional release of shame or anger directed at myself or resentment directed at myself, because I know what emotional release is.
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I practice emotional release probably more than 99% of the population.
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Like, and that's, I'm being humble about that.
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But this was like traumatic physical release, which can, of course, contains emotional release, but isn't just an emotional release.
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Like I literally felt my body unbracing, like my energetic field shift, parts of my body like literally shifting in in ways I had never physically experienced them before.
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And like the dissolution of density in those areas, and then like a new felt sense of like inner spaciousness and yeah, coherence.
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So it's been pretty revolatory.
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I I say I use that word because it's that's what it's felt like, like a massive aha to realize that the trauma of not loving myself, the trauma of being mean to myself, the trauma of feeling shame about myself was stuck in my body this whole time.
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And even though I've been practicing unconditional self-love for over a decade now, loyally, with commitment, with joy and enthusiasm, this is another perfect example of what I talk about and teach over and over again, which is healing must be holistic.
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Sure, we all know that, but the specificity of that in practice becomes more and more evident to me as I invest in my own healing.
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Because we can love ourselves.
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But again, loving ourselves is not the same thing as allowing our body to release hatred.
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Those are two very different practices, two very different energies, two very different intentions.
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So it has been extremely powerful, to say the least, to let all of that self-hatred of my youth and those imprints of self-harm release from my body and my nervous system.
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It's been such a massive trauma and physical release that I'm actually going through like a physical detox right now.
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Like my like my left leg specifically and only, which is like a key sign of where trauma was held, just my left leg broke out in rashes.
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And I'm experiencing like acute symptoms of high inflammation in my right knee right now, with like not doing anything else to change my exercise routine, diet, like literally everything else has been exactly the same except for the specific uh release of that self-hatred and these very intentional hip-opening somatic exercises.
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So, you know, I'm not using any new products, like not eating anything different, like literally nothing else in my life has changed except for this.
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So I know the detox and inflammation is specifically due to the somatic release.
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And it's been really amazing, actually.
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That's why I wanted to do this episode because it's been a massive aha moment of like, gosh, yeah, I've been practicing unconditional self-love, radical unconditional self-love.
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But it's not the same thing as releasing self-hatred in my body.
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So now let's talk about what's actually happening in your brain and your body when you withhold love from yourself and when you are hard on yourself.
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This is important to understand.
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Self-hatred isn't just like emotional, it's neurological, it's biochemical, it's physiological, and it's definitely energetic.
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Because every single time you say, I'm stupid, or I'm ugly, your brain and your body register those words as a threat because emotionally, when you say that shit to yourself, it feels shitty.
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You feel small, you constrict.
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It's stressful to talk to yourself that way and to feel those things about yourself.
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So self-talk is not without consequence because your brain isn't primarily recording who is talking.
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It's actually primarily recording how you feel, because your emotions are the primary signal to your nervous system about what's happening in your environment.
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And so your body doesn't map trauma by who did it, it maps it by how it felt.
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Were you unsupported?
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Did you feel unsafe?
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Did you feel unseen, unloved?
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So when you speak to yourself harshly, your amygdala does light up, just like it would if someone else were attacking you, meaning your brain still reacts as if you have been rejected or humiliated because you have been by yourself.
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And so the moment you turn against yourself, your nervous system says, Oh my goodness, we're under attack.
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It's happening again, because you are like attacking yourself.
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And then your survival response, of course, is then activated.
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And then that means, yeah, cortisol and adrenaline start to flood your body, preparing you for defense for that fight, flight, survival response.
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And then if that happens once or twice, you know, that's stress, that's acute stress.
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But if that happens every day for years, for decades, that is actually self-inflicted complex trauma.
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So each self-rejecting, self-shaming, self-criticizing, self-diminishing, self-harming thought triggers a micro flash of stress chemistry and responses.
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You know, that's why your heart rate goes up, your muscles tense, your breath becomes shallow.
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That's why you freeze, that's why you collapse.
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And then over time, those micro flashes of stress become chronic and they create allostatic load, which is your body's cumulative wear from chronic stress.
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And then that of course means that your nervous system is overwhelmed.
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And that is the most basic definition of trauma.
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So now, if you grew up in constant criticism, self-harm is really learned behavior, and it's going to feel familiar and thus fine with you because you have normalized scanning for what's wrong, bracing for judgment, hearing criticism directed toward yourself.
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And so that constant criticism is not only external, but then it becomes internalized.
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And then you also over time become hyper-vigilant with yourself, meaning you unconsciously not only expect criticism from the world, but you expect it from yourself.
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And that's not just like low self-worth, low self-esteem.
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It is complex trauma turned inward.
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Now, from a neuroscience perspective, your default mode network, which is the part of your brain largely responsible for being self-referential, introspective, imaginative, it becomes overactive under chronic self-criticism, which means it starts to loop stories like I'm not enough and other negative inner narratives until basically shame, toxic shame, becomes your identity.
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It's been proven that people with unresolved trauma have an overactive default mode network.
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And so that really is like neuroplasticity, unfortunately, working against you because it's causing the wiring of inner pain instead of inner peace.
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And that happens because neurons have fire together, wire together, right?
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So when you're constantly hard on yourself, using self-criticism not only as self-punishment, but for self-motivation, you're literally strengthening neural pathways in your brain that reinforce low self-worth, that reinforce negative perceptions of yourself and reinforce patterns of self-harm.
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Now, however, when you choose compassion over criticism, self-love over self-harm, then you teach your nervous system that you're safe in yourself.
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And safety is fundamental to healing and fundamental to restoring coherence.
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Now, if we go a little deeper and then look into the psychology of what is actually happening when you turn against yourself, we see something else because most people don't realize that the psyche, again, doesn't distinguish between me hurting me and someone else hurting me.
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Your subconscious only registers the primary thing, which is hurt is happening.
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So when you criticize yourself, when you reject yourself, when you withhold love from yourself, you are recreating the exact same emotional conditions that once wounded you, right?
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Your original pains, the original traumas, the abandonment, rejection, neglect.
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But what's happening now is you're just doing it to yourself.
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And so that is mirrored trauma.
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So you either witnessed your parents, your caretakers treating themselves harshly, and or you were overly criticized, or you were withheld love, or you were loved conditionally, or you were raised with negative reinforcement, where you were judged and shamed and punished often.
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And so you were conditioned to treat yourself without love because you did not receive love safely.
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And then the outer wound becomes your inner pattern.
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For example, if your parents or caretakers often made you feel small or unworthy or unlovable, not good enough, then part of your mind then takes over their role in order to stay safe.
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Now it's a survival strategy.
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It's very paradoxical, but it's self-protection.
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Because if you attacked yourself first, then no one else can, right?
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It's very similar to people with avoidant attachment styles who end relationships prematurely or first so that they do not get hurt.
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It gives you the illusion of being in control, basically, in a world that feels unsafe.
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And psychology calls that being the internalized perpetuator, like the part of you that carries the voice, the tone, the energy of whoever once hurt you.
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Now, there's nothing wrong with you if that has happened to you.
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It's just simply maladaptive self-protection that was created by a nervous system who has yet to feel safe in themselves and in the world.
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But when that happens, it is your nervous system saying, let's keep ourselves in line, let's preempt hurt so we don't get hurt again.
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But that protection comes at a devastating cost because you become your own abuser.
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You maintain the same emotional threat that once was external, but now it is internal.
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It's you doing it to yourself.
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And again, the body records that just as danger, right?
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So every single moment of self-attack really does signal to your nervous system, I am not safe with myself.
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And that's why so many people feel chronically anxious, hypervigilant, emotionally numb.
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Even when externally life on the outside seems to be okay, like pretty satisfactory.
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Their nervous system is yet still in a constant state of relational threat.
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Not because other people are necessarily being dicks to you, but because your own inner world is unpredictable.
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Your own inner world is harsh.
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And that is the essence of complex trauma because trauma is not the event, friend.
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Trauma is your response to any deeply disturbing, overwhelming, or harmful experience to your nervous system.
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And so now it's important to highlight the nuance here because there is a nuance here.
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Internal self-attack is analogous to external abuse and its psychological and physiological harm because it does activate the same survival pathways and it does activate the same feelings of powerlessness.
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But it is, of course, not entirely identical in form.
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You know, being betrayed by someone else is not identical to betraying yourself, but it does ignite the same stress response.
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It does come from the same wounding.
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Let's just make that clear.
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But each moment of self-criticism, you know, might feel small, almost harmless, even because it's so normalized.
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But your nervous system and your body like literally do keep the score, just like Bessel Vanderkolk wrote in that seminal book, which you should read if you haven't read it yet.
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And those micro-traumas don't disappear.
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They accumulate.
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You know, trauma doesn't go away because you ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist.
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So over months and years and decades, they create a self-abusive environment where constant emotional threat mirrors the same neglect and criticism and rejection that you experienced growing up.
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And so this is why developing unconditional self-love is so foundational for healing.
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You cannot heal when you are constantly recreating the traumas and wounds that you are trying to heal.
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You cannot, again, simultaneously self-harm and self-heal.
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And yet many people try to do that.
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You know, their inner world is not safe.
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It is a battlefield.
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Even when, again, nothing necessarily is quote unquote bad happening on the outside, your body still feels unsafe because internally, again, your environment is still hostile because you're not loving yourself.
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You're not creating safety within yourself.
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If you've been doing the work but still feel stuck, like no matter how much healing, manifesting, or personal growth you invest in, or spiritual practices you try, something just isn't clicking.
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You're not alone and you're not failing.
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The truth is, most teachings and approaches are outdated and only scratch the surface.
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My book, Unconditional, You Are Perfect As You Are, helps you understand exactly why things haven't been clicking and how to resolve the root of why you're struggling.
00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:16.480
Unconditional self-love isn't just a nice idea if you truly want to be free.
00:24:16.480 --> 00:24:21.200
It's the missing piece and the foundation for everything you desire.
00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:25.200
And you don't have to do or figure everything out on your own.
00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:34.400
You deserve clear, comprehensive, and empowering step-by-step guidance in self-love, self-healing, and spiritual growth.
00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:44.079
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Real mind, body, soul transformation is possible, and you can achieve it with joy and ease instead of stress and struggle.
00:25:01.680 --> 00:25:09.599
So, as a thank you for being a listener, you can get 75% off your first month of membership with the code podcast promo.
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Your links are in the show notes.
00:25:11.440 --> 00:25:13.839
Now, let's get back to the episode.
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Unfortunately, being hard on ourselves is not only culturally normalized and accepted, but it is like glorified.
00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:24.319
We mistake it for discipline.
00:25:24.319 --> 00:25:26.079
We mistake it for drive.
00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:34.880
I've had so many people over the years defend being hard on themselves as a means to motivate themselves.
00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:52.319
And when I tell them love actually is scientifically proven to be more conducive to productivity than fear, they refuse, like literally refuse to see beyond their own trauma conditioning because they continue to defend their own misery and struggle.
00:25:52.319 --> 00:25:55.519
And that is how deep the conditioning is.
00:25:55.519 --> 00:26:04.000
Meanwhile, self-love is often dismissed as being soft, not necessary, an indulgence, a cliche.
00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:13.200
But self-love is not a weakness, it is not a luxury, it is the foundation of true resilience, not trauma conditioning.
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:22.319
It is what allows your nervous system to stay regulated enough for real, genuine growth and evolution to happen productively and yes, enjoyably.
00:26:22.319 --> 00:26:27.279
Because you don't need to struggle in order to evolve into your highest self, friend.
00:26:27.279 --> 00:26:30.799
And I explain this in depth in my book and in my program.
00:26:30.799 --> 00:26:35.200
The struggle mindset is just trauma conditioning.
00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:46.160
So when people say, I'm just hard on myself because I want to be better, what they don't see is that the self-critical identity is actually a trauma response, is really just trauma conditioning.
00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:47.920
It's not their true identity.
00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:50.079
It's not even a personality trait.
00:26:50.079 --> 00:26:52.160
And it's certainly not motivation.
00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:59.200
It's just the imprint of internalized abuse, trying to keep them safe through the illusion of control.
00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:05.359
And over time, that identity, quote unquote, identity, exhausts your nervous system.
00:27:05.359 --> 00:27:14.000
It fragments you from your whole authentic self, and it literally inhibits your ability to be optimally healthy and to heal productively.
00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:17.920
You cannot build a peaceful life on the foundation of self-harm.
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:23.920
And that is why learning to love yourself unconditionally is not just like a nice practice.
00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:26.240
It is trauma resolution.
00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:28.400
It is nervous system repair.
00:27:28.400 --> 00:27:39.680
It is the reclamation of your own inner safety and the realization that love, not punishment, is what liberates you and what reclaims your wholeness.
00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:57.359
So now let's delve a little deeper into why constant self-harm through normalized self-criticism, self-judgment, self-shaming, self-rejection, and withholding love from yourself makes healing more difficult, particularly healing trauma, because this is important to understand too.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:03.200
Because you can't truly repair a system that is still being sabotaged from within.
00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:17.119
You know, if you listen to my podcast, you are aware that I talk a lot about coherence because healing requires coherence, which is the alignment of your mind, your body, and your soul with your highest self and your highest truths.
00:28:17.119 --> 00:28:18.400
That's coherence.
00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:23.200
Now, self-harm and self-hatred create energetic distortion.
00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:26.880
They also create internal mind-body distortion.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:32.720
You know, your heart is trying to open while your inner critic is still saying, you know, you don't deserve this.
00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:38.720
And so your body's trying to regulate while your mind keeps replaying guilt and shame.
00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:46.720
And that conflict not only fractures you, distorts you, but inhibits your ability to heal.
00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:57.039
So if you invest in healing, but you don't invest in unconditional self-love, you meditate, you journal, you go to therapy, you try all the things, and you want all the results.
00:28:57.039 --> 00:29:08.960
But those results are going to be superficial and any gains are going to be temporary because underneath there's a big part of you that still believes that you are not worthy of peace or happiness or health or success.
00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:18.559
And that's made evident in the way that you treat yourself and the way that you talk to yourself when you're not meditating, when you're not journaling, when you're not in therapy or doing all the healing practices.
00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:27.119
You need to understand that your nervous system cannot stabilize and self-rejection because self-rejection is self-harm.
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:30.720
There is just no way to argue against that.
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:34.559
And a harmful environment is not a safe environment.
00:29:34.559 --> 00:29:38.400
And your brain and your body can only heal when they feel safe.
00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:41.200
Here's a little more neuroscience for you.
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:44.079
You know, your brain's primary job is survival.
00:29:44.079 --> 00:29:47.200
It's unfortunately not transformation.
00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:49.680
It's not becoming our highest selves.
00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:50.960
It is to survive.
00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:59.839
So if your subconscious has been conditioned to believe that self criticism keeps you safe by preventing rejection, preventing failure, or humiliation.
00:29:59.839 --> 00:30:04.799
Then it's gonna resist healing, even when you consciously want it.
00:30:04.799 --> 00:30:07.200
This is like why coherence is so important.
00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:10.960
Your conscious mind wants one thing, but your subconscious mind believes another.
00:30:10.960 --> 00:30:22.480
Now, to your unhealed survival brain, love feels unsafe if you've only ever known love as unstable and criticizing and unreliable and neglectful and painful.
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:29.759
So when you start doing inner work, your nervous system can actually resist because it's against what's familiar.
00:30:29.759 --> 00:30:36.799
And it may say, wait a second, if I stop being hard on myself, I'm gonna lose control and then I'm gonna get hurt again.
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:44.240
And that's why a lot of people resist self-love, because their nervous systems think that self-harm is self-protection.
00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:53.680
And then they get stuck in their healing, and healing is not enjoyable, it's not productive, because there is nervous system resistance and subconscious resistance.
00:30:53.680 --> 00:31:07.839
Because when you attempt to heal while while still rejecting parts of yourself, you just reinforce fragmentation and self-abandonment, self-rejection instead of integration of your wholeness.
00:31:07.839 --> 00:31:15.440
And that's why you never truly heal, because healing, by definition, is a reclamation of your wholeness.
00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:19.759
So you can't reject parts of you and also embody your wholeness.
00:31:19.759 --> 00:31:27.519
Like you're saying, I want to heal, but only the parts of me that are deemed worthy and lovable and okay to be seen.
00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:31.440
The rest of it I can just shit on, I can criticize, I can shame.
00:31:31.440 --> 00:31:33.920
And that is not healing, friend.
00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:39.359
Healing, again, by definition, is a reclamation of your freedom, your wholeness.
00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:45.279
And so both of those things require true integration of your whole self.
00:31:45.279 --> 00:31:49.839
So when you reject parts of yourself, you're not truly free.
00:31:49.839 --> 00:31:52.160
Those shadow parts are exiled.
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:57.200
They're imprisoned to the darkness without any love, without any compassion.
00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:01.119
So how can you heal and be whole and free when you treat yourself like that?
00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:15.519
Healing happens when you look at the parts of yourself that you are scared of, that you're ashamed of, that disgust you, and you meet them with love and acceptance instead of judgment and shame.
00:32:15.519 --> 00:32:18.079
And this is why healing must begin.
00:32:18.079 --> 00:32:25.599
True healing must begin by creating a new relationship with yourself so that your nervous system can learn to trust you.
00:32:25.599 --> 00:32:30.559
And this is why I teach unconditional self-love at the very start of my program.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:38.960
It is the number one priority, it's primary, because it's the only way healing can happen authentically, productively, and enjoyably.
00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:47.680
We need to stop normalizing self-hatred because when you live in chronic self-rejection, you're not just being hard on yourself, you are recreating trauma.
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:50.319
You are keeping your nervous system on edge.
00:32:50.319 --> 00:32:53.279
You're making it more difficult for yourself to heal.
00:32:53.279 --> 00:33:04.720
And so when you recognize that self-hatred is not only traumatic in and of itself over time, but that it also does reinforce trauma and it does make healing more difficult.
00:33:04.720 --> 00:33:12.000
I hope you use this awareness not to shame yourself more, but to soften and to love yourself more.
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:22.400
Because when you finally stop fighting with yourself, your brain, your body, and your field can finally do what they were designed to do, which is heal.
00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:28.720
And also, healing begins when you realize that there really is no war between you and the world.
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:32.160
You know, in the end, there's just only your relationship with yourself.
00:33:32.160 --> 00:33:41.039
And the bridge that you create between you and the parts of you that learn to survive by hurting, that's the transformation.
00:33:41.039 --> 00:33:54.960
And that realization of that's your responsibility to do, that's your relationship to heal, that your relationship with yourself can be healing or harmful, and that you have like total control over the quality of that relationship with yourself.
00:33:54.960 --> 00:33:57.759
That's when you start to end the cycle of self-harm.
00:33:57.759 --> 00:34:02.079
Because again, this isn't about blaming yourself for hating yourself.
00:34:02.079 --> 00:34:05.359
You didn't create your inner critic in a vacuum.
00:34:05.359 --> 00:34:24.079
It was learned, it was conditioned by your family system, by social and cultural conditioning, by collective patterns, by unquestioned trauma, unresolved trauma, environments that equated your worth with output and performance, and love with compliance.
00:34:24.079 --> 00:34:28.159
So your patterns of self-harm were never your fault, okay?
00:34:28.159 --> 00:34:33.039
It was just your nervous system's way of adapting to a world that felt unsafe.
00:34:33.039 --> 00:34:52.000
Now, if we look at this from a spiritual perspective, which is also very important here, the more that you harm yourself with self-criticism and self-shaming and self-judgment and self-rejection and other forms of self-harm and self-hatred, the more you subscribe to the illusion of separation.
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:54.480
Everything is made of pure unconditional love.
00:34:54.480 --> 00:35:00.880
That is the essence of all existence and creation, because that is what source is.
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:03.119
Pure unconditional love.
00:35:03.119 --> 00:35:08.239
And therefore, it is the most powerful energy because it is limitless.
00:35:08.239 --> 00:35:15.840
So when you resist self-love and defend self-harm, you are opposing your very nature.
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:26.400
And that is also one of the reasons why self-harm not only feels shitty and is literally traumatizing over time, but it never facilitates your highest good.
00:35:26.400 --> 00:35:34.079
Sure, you may think you're motivating yourself by being hard on yourself, but your arrival at that goal was arduous.
00:35:34.079 --> 00:35:35.440
It wasn't peaceful.
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:40.880
You literally took the low road instead of the high road from an energetic spiritual perspective.
00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:47.039
You know, you chose to operate in distortion rather than in coherence and harmony with yourself.
00:35:47.039 --> 00:35:59.519
So the more that you defend self-harm and resist unconditional self-love, the more you deny your own divinity, your own limitlessness, and your source self.
00:35:59.519 --> 00:36:24.079
And that means your highest timeline is always going to be out of reach, because that potential will always be discorded from you because you are resonating with scarcity, with distortion, and fragmentation under the guise of separation, because you're treating yourself as if certain parts of you are more lovable than other parts of you, when in fact nothing in all of existence is subject to that distortion.
00:36:24.079 --> 00:36:25.920
That is a trauma lens.
00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:28.000
That is a trauma narrative.
00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:32.079
Because the essence of everything is pure unconditional love.
00:36:32.079 --> 00:36:56.159
And when you understand that, not just intellectually, but embodied, when you respect that and you treat yourself like that 24-7, without cause, without pause, meaning not just when you feel good, not just when you remember, then that is when embodying your highest self and your highest timeline become possible because that is when you are living your highest truth.
00:36:56.159 --> 00:36:59.519
You are pure unconditional love, friend.
00:36:59.519 --> 00:37:06.320
Every single particle and wave of your existence at its core is pure unconditional love.
00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:10.320
So that means love was never something that you had to earn.
00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:23.760
It's never anything you have to fight for, defend, or reject yourself from, to demean yourself, to satisfy a perspective of yourself that was mirrored to you by a parent or caretaker that was wounded.
00:37:23.760 --> 00:37:30.880
Pure unconditional love is the foundational energy that animates you and allows you to exist.
00:37:30.880 --> 00:37:42.880
And when you start treating yourself as this sacred being that you are, your nervous system, your mind, your body, your soul can finally begin to relax and heal.
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:57.519
And now I want to briefly talk about how to start remembering that and embodying that so that you can stop that cycle of self-harm and start loving yourself in a way that is natural and doesn't feel deserving.
00:37:57.519 --> 00:37:59.920
Meaning you don't have to earn self-love.
00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:01.039
You are love.
00:38:01.039 --> 00:38:03.599
You just have to remember that that is what you are.
00:38:03.599 --> 00:38:09.119
So self-love isn't just like a concept, it's not a thought, it's not even a feeling.
00:38:09.119 --> 00:38:15.199
It is a physiological, energetic, holistic event and truth.
00:38:15.199 --> 00:38:20.239
It's a mind, body, soul practice that tells your nervous system I am safe now.
00:38:20.239 --> 00:38:22.880
I know who and what I am.
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:25.760
All is well, I can breathe.
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:27.199
I am free.
00:38:27.199 --> 00:38:28.559
I am whole.
00:38:28.559 --> 00:38:32.639
I am enough and perfect exactly as I am right now.
00:38:32.639 --> 00:38:36.880
Now, for the deep dive into how to love yourself unconditionally, please read my book.
00:38:36.880 --> 00:38:43.119
This is not just like a plug, but I mean it literally is like the entire book is about unconditional self-love.
00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:54.480
And it's the only book about unconditional self-love because there are different types of self-love, but unconditional self-love is the only truly type of healing self-love.
00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:58.960
But to start, let's talk about self-talk and specifically your tone.
00:38:58.960 --> 00:39:04.480
Because the tone of your inner voice is just as powerful as the words that you say to yourself.
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:06.880
Like you can say, I'm enough as I am.
00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:16.079
But if the tone underneath those words is resistance, distrust, impatience, disbelief, your amygdala, right?
00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:27.119
The part of your brain that detects emotional safety or lack of safety is going to register that as stress or a threat because it senses the feeling of your distrust.
00:39:27.119 --> 00:39:32.960
It senses the feeling of your resistance rather than just the words that you're saying.
00:39:32.960 --> 00:39:37.119
Because your brain doesn't respond to logic, it responds to feeling.
00:39:37.119 --> 00:39:39.840
And that's why tone is really important here.
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:56.719
So when you speak to yourself with gentleness, meaning with real love, like the way that you would speak to a child who is frightened or lost, you begin to rewire your amygdala because you tell your survival response that you are no longer in danger, that there is no threat.
00:39:56.719 --> 00:40:05.440
And this is how you begin to build trust internally, not through reasoning, not through willpower, but through felt safety.
00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:09.360
Because your body doesn't heal in the presence of danger and stress.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:13.119
It only heals in the presence of love and peace.
00:40:13.119 --> 00:40:30.079
So practice speaking to yourself softly, and that is going to require you to breathe, to stop bracing, to not only think about the words that you use when you communicate with yourself, when you relate to yourself, but also the tone that you use.
00:40:30.079 --> 00:40:36.480
You know, people who don't have proper instruction about self-love don't understand that self-love is not just an action.
00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:48.639
It is a feeling, it is a presence, it is connection, it is intention, it is self-acceptance, it is self-respect, it is self-devotion, it is self-compassion, it is all of those things.
00:40:48.639 --> 00:40:57.039
And it's so much more than being nice to yourself or pretending to like yourself for the sake of the concept of self-love.
00:40:57.039 --> 00:41:04.079
True self-love is true love directed toward yourself because you feel true love for yourself.
00:41:04.079 --> 00:41:07.440
I explain all this in my book about unconditional self-love.
00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:10.159
Obviously, this is not something that you can turn on like a switch.
00:41:10.159 --> 00:41:11.360
It is a practice.
00:41:11.360 --> 00:41:14.960
So you should read it to get all of the details of how to get there.
00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:24.880
But for this moment, let's begin with softening the tone of how you speak to yourself and to engage a tone of love for yourself.
00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:35.360
Even if you don't feel love for yourself, if that's difficult for you to do, just try to imagine whenever you speak to yourself that you're always speaking to your inner child.
00:41:35.360 --> 00:41:40.000
And that's actually the part of you that needs like the most love, anyways.
00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.079
So just imagine your inner child every time that you speak to yourself.
00:41:44.079 --> 00:41:56.079
And hopefully that's going to allow you a moment to pause and breathe and take a beat, to be present with that inner child with love, to connect to that tender part of you.
00:41:56.079 --> 00:42:02.079
And then you can soften your tone so that your nervous system can feel you relax.
00:42:02.079 --> 00:42:12.239
And that's the whole point right now: to begin telling your nervous system that you're safe in yourself, that you are no longer a cause of harm to yourself, but a source of healing.
00:42:12.239 --> 00:42:13.679
So start there.
00:42:13.679 --> 00:42:19.280
Can you be gentle and soft with yourself instead of hard and cruel and punishing?
00:42:19.280 --> 00:42:30.639
The more that you make that choice to be soft and gentle over and over and over again, because not only is it healing, but because you deserve love, you just innately do.
00:42:30.639 --> 00:42:44.880
Every single part of you does, all day, every day, regardless of where you are, what you've done, who you are, then the more that you're going to cultivate genuine self-love instead of reinforcing self-hatred and self-harm.
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:48.159
And then of course, the more that you will naturally heal.
00:42:48.159 --> 00:42:50.000
That is a guarantee, friend.
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:53.760
Because again, being hard on yourself over and over is traumatic.
00:42:53.760 --> 00:42:59.760
It harms your brain, it harms your body, it harms your relationships, it harms your connection to your own soul.
00:42:59.760 --> 00:43:06.800
And that trauma, of course, is stored in your body like all the other trauma that you haven't fully resolved and fully released.
00:43:06.800 --> 00:43:14.480
Now, I've been healing for nearly 15 years, and I have not experienced the release of trauma like the release of self-hatred.
00:43:14.480 --> 00:43:20.400
I've never ever had my body break out in rashes from trauma release.
00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:35.760
So it's been really evident to me that self-hatred is like toxic and my body has is now like detoxing all of that stored stress chemistry that's now discharging like a motherfucker, you know, while I've been doing these new set of somatic exercises.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:43.119
And I'm just in awe, really, of how resilient and how naturally self-healing and intelligent my body is.
00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:54.719
And I am like so grateful at how much my body is being liberated and how much it's continuing to heal as I continue to love myself unconditionally, layer by layer.
00:43:54.719 --> 00:43:56.880
Again, self-love is not a cliche.
00:43:56.880 --> 00:44:05.679
It's not a luxury, it's not a soft sentiment for people who spiritually bypass and don't want to face their pain.
00:44:05.679 --> 00:44:18.400
It is the foundation for real trauma repair, for real nervous system regulation, for real mind, body, soul healing, and for true inner peace and coherence and spiritual liberation.
00:44:18.400 --> 00:44:24.320
Because every single time you choose compassion over criticism, you're not being weak.
00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:26.960
You are literally rewiring your brain.
00:44:26.960 --> 00:44:31.760
You are literally recalibrating your nervous system toward safety and coherence.
00:44:31.760 --> 00:44:37.679
You are literally shifting your biology from survival and stress to safety and peace.
00:44:37.679 --> 00:44:41.679
And you're teaching your body that love is safe.
00:44:41.679 --> 00:44:43.360
That is huge.
00:44:43.360 --> 00:44:49.519
And every time you love yourself, you are honoring and you are remembering your divinity friend.
00:44:49.519 --> 00:45:08.960
And you're also gonna learn that when you stop fighting with yourself, being antagonistic with yourself, putting yourself down and being needlessly harmful to yourself, you're gonna reclaim your sovereignty by releasing that old conditioning that told you that love is a condition, that love is cruel and punishing or withholding.
00:45:08.960 --> 00:45:12.159
Because you're gonna choose your own version of love.
00:45:12.159 --> 00:45:22.639
Love that is pure, love that is truly unconditional, love that is loyal, love that is unyielding even in the face of hardship and challenges and loss.
00:45:22.639 --> 00:45:31.920
And that is when you not only remember what love is, but that you again don't need to earn love, prove yourself for love.
00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:36.000
You don't need to deserve or defend yourself against something that you innately are.
00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:38.320
So here's your action step for the week.
00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:46.559
Sometime today, I want you to find three, a few minutes, three to five minutes, quiet minutes to love yourself softly.
00:45:46.559 --> 00:45:57.440
And in those moments, I want you to place a hand over your heart, not to say I love you right away, but to simply just let yourself know that you are there for yourself.
00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:10.559
So you want to start by taking three slow breaths from your belly, in through your nose, out through your mouth, and on each exhale, actively soften the part of your body that's been holding tension, right?
00:46:10.559 --> 00:46:18.079
You gotta let your shoulders draw, let your jaw unclinch, let your stomach expand on every single exhale.
00:46:18.079 --> 00:46:29.920
And then I want you to connect to your inner child, see that sacred child within you, and then take another deep breath from your heart space and tell them, I see you.
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I know that you have tried.
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I know that you are tired, but you are safe with me now.
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I honor that you deserve love instead of harm.
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And then notice what happens in your body.
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Maybe you're gonna take another deep breath, maybe you're gonna start to cry, maybe your chest will soften, maybe you'll like twitch uh when something in your body like releases, but something is gonna happen because your nervous system is gonna reorganize into safety in that moment and coherence is gonna start to calibrate.
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:04.559
And do that once a day for a week.
00:47:04.559 --> 00:47:10.000
And remember, you're not doing it to feel better, you're not doing it to like fake self-love.
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:23.519
You're doing it to teach your system what love sounds like and what love feels like coming from you, unforced, because that's how you begin to reparent the part of you that's been living and normalized self-attack.
00:47:23.519 --> 00:47:26.400
Now, you may think that that practice is insignificant, right?
00:47:26.400 --> 00:47:28.320
Many people misunderstand self-love.
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They think it's like some grand thing or it requires like certain types of meditation.
00:47:34.639 --> 00:47:37.599
But loving yourself is not complicated.
00:47:37.599 --> 00:47:40.239
It is actually very, very simple.
00:47:40.239 --> 00:47:48.159
Softening your tone, connecting to your inner child for a few minutes every day to validate their needs, just to honor them.
00:47:48.159 --> 00:47:56.000
You know, it may feel like whatever, but that loving tone activates your parasympathetic nervous system.
00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:58.480
It shifts your body out of fight or flight.
00:47:58.480 --> 00:48:01.440
So that practice harmonizes your heart field.
00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:03.440
It creates heart-brain coherence.
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And practicing, replacing that internalized like inner critic with the internalized inner caretaker, or rather, lover, is a literal reprogramming of that false wounded identity.
00:48:18.559 --> 00:48:23.760
So your tone, right, the way that you speak to yourself can be deep medicine.
00:48:23.760 --> 00:48:27.519
And love is always the medicine we seek.
00:48:27.519 --> 00:48:31.840
It always comes back to love because that is what everything is made of.
00:48:31.840 --> 00:48:46.800
It's our relationship with love, our perception of love, what we expect from love, what we fear about love, what we judge about love that shapes our entire reality, including the relationship that we have with others and ourselves.
00:48:46.800 --> 00:48:49.360
And that includes our relationship with everything, right?
00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:51.119
With abundance, with success.
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Because everything is made of love.
00:48:53.360 --> 00:48:56.000
Everything at its essence is love.
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So when you heal your relationship with love, starting with your relationship with how you love yourself, then you inevitably heal your entire world, inner and outer, because there is no separation.
00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:13.280
Thank you so much for being here today.
00:49:13.280 --> 00:49:24.559
I hope this episode awakened you, inspired you, and reminded you of what's possible when you love, heal, and free yourself, and reclaim your highest truth and power.
00:49:24.559 --> 00:49:37.119
If this show has transformed or enlightened your self-love, growth, and healing journey, please like, save, and share this episode and leave a positive review on Apple or Spotify.
00:49:37.119 --> 00:49:39.920
And subscribe to be reminded of new episodes.
00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:44.639
Your support is deeply appreciated and truly helps this show so much.
00:49:44.639 --> 00:49:48.559
And if today's episode resonated with you, don't stop here.
00:49:48.559 --> 00:49:49.519
Go deeper.
00:49:49.519 --> 00:49:58.559
My book, Unconditional, You Are Perfect As You Are, expands on these teachings and gives you the missing framework about self-love that no one is talking about.
00:49:58.559 --> 00:50:03.039
So get your copy today to start reading and loving yourself more.
00:50:03.039 --> 00:50:12.800
And if you're ready for the ultimate healing journey with daily instruction and guidance from me, I'd love to see you inside the Source membership.
00:50:12.800 --> 00:50:19.119
The only holistic and comprehensive step-by-step self-healing program that is proven to work.
00:50:19.119 --> 00:50:24.320
Remember, you were never meant to struggle or wait for what is already yours.
00:50:24.320 --> 00:50:28.159
It's time to claim everything you want and more.
00:50:28.159 --> 00:50:30.079
All the links are in the show notes.
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I'll see you next time.